This Is Why You Can't Wait Until Late

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2:29Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

3:11Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. As you know, on Sundays, usually we do excerpts from the ancient Stoics, or sometimes we do talks that I've given, or we do deep dives into certain topics. Well, today I wanted to tell a little bit of a story. I send out articles once a week or so over on my website, ryanholiday.net. I've been doing it for a long time. In October, we're doing the theme of Memento Amori. This is a piece I wrote a while ago, but obviously pertains to Stoicism, and it's something that I wanted to share with all of you because, well, I've been thinking about a lot.

4:00This is why you can't wait until later. At 6.45 p.m. on Wednesday, April 23, 2014, I got an email from my friend Seth Roberts, the pioneering and peerless scientist. I opened it and saw that it was the first of a long-awaited column called Personal Science for The Observer, where I was then an editor. I assumed it was good. Seth's work always was. So I marked it as unread and told myself I could wait until Monday. On Saturday, less than 72 hours later, Seth collapsed of a fatal heart attack while hiking in Berkeley. It would have been so easy for me to reply and tell him how happy I was with what he'd written or how much he'd helped me over the years or how excited I was to be working with him.

4:44How hard would it have been to give even the courtesy of acknowledging his email? But I didn't. And now I'll never be able to get to tell him anything ever again. This man who had mentored me, who had inspired me, who had made me rethink how I did so many things, I had left him on hold and now he was dead. Of course, I was familiar with the stoic concept of memento mori. In meditations, Mark Surrealis writes that you could leave life right now. He says you must let that determine what you do and say and think. I mean, of course, I know any of us could go at any moment. there is a difference between knowing something and knowing it.

5:18And there is nothing like losing someone you care about suddenly and unexpectedly to help you understand how fragile and ephemeral life is. In an interview shortly after the death of the musician David Crosby, Crosby's bandmate Graham Nash talked about a falling out that they never got to resolve. He had sent me a voicemail saying that he wanted to talk to apologize, Nash said, and I emailed him back and said, okay, call me at 11 o 'clock tomorrow your time, which is two o 'clock back on the East Coast. He never called, and then he was gone. You think you can do it tomorrow. You think you have tomorrow, but you very well may not.

5:54The grudges we hold on to, the strange priorities we hold, the nonsense we get bogged down in, there's a kind of arrogance in that. It takes tomorrow for granted. This is the one thing all fools have in common, Seneca wrote. They are always getting ready to live. They are always thinking that they have plenty of time. They are always saying that they'll be able to get to it later. They think that opportunities, that people, that life can be deferred to the future. They cannot. These things exist, as Tolstoy wrote, only in the present. Procrastination is egotistical. It's entitlement embodied. I carried guilt about that with Seth for a long time.

6:33You can see the eulogy that I gave him was posted online. Tim Ferriss gave another really good one. but it's taken me almost 10 years to even be able to write about it. Meditation on our mortality is not a productivity hack. It's much more than that. For me, I've tried to take from this experience a relatively simple lesson. I tell people how I feel about them when I have the chance.

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8:32Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. That's hellofresh.com, stoic10fm to get 10 free meals plus free breakfast for life. It wasn't just Seth that taught me this. I remember I was sitting in O 'Hare Airport a couple of years ago. I saw something on TV in passing that reminded me of my friend Brett Barra. And I remember thinking, oh, I should message him. And then I got distracted and boarded my flight. And when I landed, I got a terrible bit of deja vu. More terrible news. He had died taking an afternoon nap. If a friend pops into my head, now I take it as a sign.

9:09You need to reach out. Don't do it later. Don't leave him hanging. Don't assume you'll get another chance. Take the one that's in front of you right now. Accept the gift that's in front of you right now. It is the present. It's very unlikely you'll regret it. It may well be the last thing that you get to do. For instance, in The Daily Dad, which is out now, you can check that out. I tell the story of Bob Saget, the legendary comedian, the longtime host of America's Funniest Home Videos, and Danny Tanner on Full House. He gets this text from his daughter as he's about to go on stage to perform stand-up.

9:43We don't know what she said, but it wasn't urgent. And he could have said to himself, I'll respond later, I'll call in the morning. We never want to consider it's our last chance. We tell ourselves that it's nothing, that there will be other phone calls, other texts, more goodnights. But that's not always true. Saget took a second to send what neither of them could have known would be his last text. Thank you, he wrote. Love you. Showtime. Hours later, he was found dead tragically in his Orlando hotel room at age 65. No one knows what their last words will be. No one knows how much time they have.

10:21So let's use the time we have before we lose the time that we're never guaranteed. Let us make sure we tell people that we care about them. Let's make sure we reply to the email, we return the call. We tell those who we love how we feel about them while we can. And I'm not perfect at this. I make mistakes, but I do, especially for the people I know who are older, grandparents, old friends, etc., mentors. I try to never leave it hanging shoot him a note and I've gotten better it challenges you it challenged me to even just be a little bit more open with my feelings I think part of the reason we don't say these things, it's not just that we think we have forever it's just a little awkward we want to save it till later one awkward encounter when we know it's the end or something but you don't know so putting yourself out there telling someone you love them, that you care about them and they're sorry that you were just thinking about them.

11:22Hey, I really like this thing that you did. I just try to send more notes. That's one of the lessons I took. And when I have opportunities to see people, I try to not make excuses to get out of them at the last minute because I'd feel bad if I blew them off and that was the last chance. So that's the lesson today. That's what we're meditating here on this month in October, right? the memento mori theme of it, putting aside the arrogance, the sense of invincibility, the sense of entitlement, the sense of lots and lots and lots more time, accepting the humility, the vulnerability, the openness, the acceptance of you never know.

12:08So you might as well use this time. Anyways, that's today's message. I do feel a great debt to Seth. You know, it struck me as I'm reading this when I look at that date, you know, The Obstacles Away came out like a month later. I don't know if he saw a galley of it or not, but I think he would have been proud. And certainly I do try to make him proud. And Brett Barrett, I know they told me later he was buried with one of my books, which was so meaningful and kind of mind blowing to me. So those are two guys. I didn't know them super well. We didn't spend a lot of time together, but the time we did spend together, it did have a big impact on me.

12:45Anyways, that's what Memento Mori is about. That's the reminder here I got in the ring too. Anyways, Memento Mori. Talk to y 'all soon.

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